My name is Tanith Valasi,I am an animal Rights Activist and i started this site to try and help people understand,why so many of us say..It is enough...this abuse must stop... Over the years we have won many victories,but we are just scraping the surface of what is going on worldwide.So i will keep updating this site to the best of my ability,so that you can make an informed decision about what you think is the right thing to do...Sit back with blinkered eyes or help. The choice is yours alone.As you view the following pages you will see graphic images of the truth,undeniably there in front of your eyes,these are the fogotten faces of the innocent.Help me,Help Us...break this cycle of on going cruelty use your voice to speak out for them.

Although other animals cannot reason or speak the way humans do, this
does not give us the right to do with them as we like. The fact remains
that all animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering,
and in suffering they are our equals.

There is ample evidence that animal species
are capable of feeling, So we condemn totally the infliction of suffering
upon our fellow creatures and the curtailment of their behavioural and
other needs save where this is necessary for their own individual
benefit.

"We do not accept that a difference in species alone (any
more than a difference in race) can justify wanton exploitation or
oppression in the name of science or sport, or for use as food, for
commercial profit or for other human gain.

"We believe in the evolutionary and moral kinship of all
animals and declare our belief that all sentient creatures have rights
to life, liberty and natural enjoyment.

"We therefore call for the protection of these rights."

Animal Rights...The Begining..

The first documented pro-animal activist goes back to 6th century BC with Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher. Pythagoras believed in the transmigration of souls between human and animals, a reason for him to treat animals with respect. Ahead of his time, he opposed meat and religious sacrifices from fear of killing the soul of a loved one, or an ancestor.

Human beings, stop desecrating your bodies with impious foodstuffs. There are crops; there are apples weighing down the branches; and ripening grapes on the vines; there are flavoursome herbs; and those that can be rendered mild and gentle over the flames; and you do not lack flowing milk; or honey fragrant from the flowering thyme. The earth, prodigal of its wealth, supplies you with gentle sustenance, and offers you food without killing or shedding blood." Ovid, "Pythagoras's Teachings: Vegetarianism"

Empedocles, 450 BCE, was another pro-animal activist, who talked against animal slavery and the consumption of meat.

"Slaughter and meat-eating are the most terrible of sins, indeed for him animal slaughter is murder and meat-eating is cannibalism" Empedocles, "Fragments: On Purifications".

In the 4th century BC, one of Aristotle's students, Theophrastus (370 285 BC), disagreed with his teacher arguing that eating animals was wrong because it robbed animals of their life, that animals could reason, sense and feel like humans do. Eating them was therefore unfair.

The most ancient law about animal rights comes from India. It was proclaimed by King Asoka (274-232 BCE), Emperor of India. He became a Buddhist. "Here (in my domain) no living beings are to be slaughtered or offered in sacrifice" (The Fourteen Rock Edicts.)

India has a long history of non-violence against humans and animals. Jainism is the strictest religion of the world when it comes to committing violence. Animals' right is very high in the scale of what is important. Jains cover their faces to avoid swallowing bugs inadvertently, and say a prayer every night to ask for forgiveness to animals they might have killed during the day.

Cicero [106-43BCE], Virgil [70-19BCE] and Plutarch [46-120] were all opposed to human's domination over animals and the cruel used they made of them. In their writings, they plead for humankind to recognize the pain animals were enduring because of humans.

"And for a little peace of flesh we take away their life, we bereave them of their sun and of light, cutting short that race of life which nature had limited and prefixed for them; and more than so, those lamentable and trembling voices which they utter for fear, we suppose to be inarticulate or insignificant sounds, and nothing less than pitiful prayers, supplications, pleas & justifications of those poor innocent creatures, who in their language, every one of them cry." (Plutarch, Morals)

One of the first defender of animal right during Enlightening Era is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712- 1778). Descartes had stated that animals have neither souls nor minds, and therefore cannot think or even feel pain. Rousseau argues that animals are sensitive beings, they seek to participate in the natural rights of the universe and as such, man is subject to some sort of duties toward them," specifically "one [has] the right not to be needlessly mistreated by the other." Rousseau. "Discourse on Inequality" 1754

Scottish writer John Oswald (1760-1793) was another advocate of animal rights. In his "Cry of Nature or an Appeal to Mercy and Justice on Behalf of the Persecuted Animals", he says that the division of work in society was the reason why vegetarism was not more common. He thought that if every person witnessed the death of the animals they ate, vegetarism would become more popular.

Ireland was the first state in modern times to pass a Law for animal right. In 1635, the "Act against Plowing by the Tayle, and Pulling the Wooll off Living Sheep", was made public by Thomas Wentworth.

The first animal protection right law of the US was passed in 1641 in Massachusetts. Nathaniel Ward's, "Off the Bruite Creature," Liberty 92 and 93 of the Body of Liberties, states that:

"92 No man shall exercise any Tirranny or Crueltie towards any bruite Creature which are usuallie kept for man's use.

93 If any man shall have occasion to leade or drive Cattel from place to place that is far of, so that they be weary, or hungry, or fall sick, or lambe, it shall be lawful to rest or refresh them, for a competent time, in any open place that I not Corne, meadow, or inclosed for some peculiar use."

Many pleas for legislation in the US were heard from that time on: 1737, 1749, 1789, 1796, 1798, 1799 have all seen many requests made by influential men at that time, that inhumane treatment of animals should be legislated in the US, without success. Some bills were passed in 1800, preventing bating bulls, and "malicious cruelty to animals". Although Richard Martin's 1822 Bill to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle was the first real success in animal right legislation in 1822.

At the same time in Europe, Schopenhauer argues that animals have the same spirit as humans, though lacking reason. He thus pleads for consideration to be given to animals in morality, and he opposed vivisection as a means to experiment medical research.

Britain founded the first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824. The same group sprang to several European countries and finally reached New York in 1866. Henry Salt wrote in 1898 the first contemporary book on animal right, "Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress."

In 1933, one of the first laws enacted by national socialist (Nazi) party was one of animal protection.

But the modern animal liberation movement was really born in the 70's, when Oxford university philosophers began to question if moral rights of animals were necessarily inferior to that of human beings. The term speciesism was them coined to describe those who believe that the human species had superior rights to animals. Peter Singer then formulates the basic arguments on animal liberation in his 1975 book "Animal Liberation", the "bible" of the animal rights liberation movement

And The Fight Goes On ............

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANIMAL RIGHTS

The animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.That life includes a variety of biological, individual, and social needs. The satisfaction of these needs is a source of pleasure, their frustration or abuse, a source of pain. In these fundamental ways, the nonhuman animals in labs and on farms, for example, are the same as human beings. And so it is that the ethics of our dealings with them, and with one another, must acknowledge the same fundamental moral principles.

At its deepest level, human ethics is based on the independent value of the individual: The moral worth of any one human being is not to be measured by how useful that person is in advancing the interest of other human beings. To treat human beings in ways that do not honor their independent value is to violate that most basic of human rights: the right of each person to be treated with respect.

The philosophy of animal rights demands only that logic be respected. For any argument that plausibly explains the independent value of human beings implies that other animals have this same value, and have it equally. And any argument that plausibly explains the right of humans to be treated with respect, also implies that these other animals have this same right, and have it equally, too.

It is true, therefore, that women do not exist to serve men, blacks to serve whites, the poor to serve the rich, or the weak to serve the strong. The philosophy of animal rights not only accepts these truths, it insists upon and justifies them.

But this philosophy goes further. By insisting upon and justifying the independent value and rights of other animals, it gives scientifically informed and morally impartial reasons for denying that these animals exist to serve us.

Once this truth is acknowledged, it is easy to understand why the philosophy of animal rights is uncompromising in its response to each and every injustice other animals are made to suffer.

It is not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands in the case of animals used in science, for example, but empty cages: not "traditional" animal agriculture, but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not "more humane" hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbarous practices.

For when an injustice is absolute, one must oppose it absolutely. It was not "reformed" slavery that justice demanded, not "re- formed" child labor, not "reformed" subjugation of women. In each of these cases, abolition was the only moral answer. Merely to reform injustice is to prolong injustice.

The philosophy of animal rights demands this same answer-- abolition--in response to the unjust exploitation of other animals. It is not the details of unjust exploitation that must be changed. It is the unjust exploitation itself that must be ended, whether on the farm, in the lab, or among the wild, for example. The philosophy of animal rights asks for nothing more, but neither will it be satisfied with anything less.

I BELIEVE..............All animals deserve protection from needless cruelty and suffering.All animals should have the freedom to walk, run, swim, and play.Even though the arc of history is long, it bends towards justice.No one is free when others are oppressed.We can do better.Our society should protect the weakest and most vulnerable.Might doesn’t make right.It's our moral obligation to prevent cruelty.Farm animals deserve the same consideration as our dogs and cats.Eating meat supports needless violence.If animals could talk, they would thank a vegetarian.It's wrong to cram animals into cages for their entire lives.There is no such thing as "humane" slaughter.The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.No animal should suffer or die for my breakfast, lunch, or dinner.If slaughterhouses had glass walls everyone would be a vegetarian.We have the power to choose kindness over cruelty.When it comes to suffering, animals are our equals.

Our food choices have the power to change the world for the better.They value their lives and freedom like we value ours.Animal rights is a social justice issueBecause it's up to us.

I WOULD"NT..............Want to spend my life crammed in a cageEat my friendsEat my dogSteal a child away from his mother, like they do to dairy cows and their babiesCastrate piglets without painkillersSear off a birds beak to save a little cashLock a pig in a stall so small that she couldn’t turn around for nearly her entire lifeI wouldn't pay someone to do all these things on my behalf, not in good conscience

Therefore

I WILL.......................Speak out against oppressionBe the change I want to see in the worldInspire othersSpeak the truth, from a place of respect and integrityBe forward-thinkingNever give upTreat others the way I want to be treatedMake food choices that will respect animals and the earth.Live in line with my values.

TOGETHER WE ARE.................Changing the worldExposing animal exploitationPreventing needless sufferingGiving a voice to the voicelessSaving livesBuilding a kinder tomorrow for all beings

OUR PLEDGE.....Until the last flesh is consumed

and no more animals are born to doom

Our struggle is beside the weakrespect for life is what we seek

Until the last is forced to entertainand no more animals are driven insaneFor all those beaten to a cowerwe lend our strength and our power

Until the last suffers in a cruel testand scientific fraud is finally confessedTo those voiceless we give them worduntil their agonizing cries are heard

Until the last dead skin is wornand for our usage no animal is bornRelentless battles we must fightuntil all others see compassion's light

Until the last abuse has ceasedand existence is granted to every beastWe won't abandon or give inbecause this war we intend to win